Sirius Black's Time Travel Shenanigans
by Irid alMenie
Summary: Sirius Black escapes Azkaban prison. We all know the story... Or do we?
1. The First Article

**Sirius Black escapes Azkaban!**

 _Last night known mass-murderer Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban prison, the Ministry announced in a press conference earlier today. "We are still investigating how such a breach of security could have taken place," said a Ministry spokesperson. "We are pursuing every line of investigation."_

 _Black was apprehended two years ago while laughing at the scene of his crime, a muggle street in London where he had blown up Peter Pettigrew and 12 muggles with one curse. Of his former friend, all that remained was one finger._

 _The escape comes at a bad time for Minister Bagnold, who was already under heavy bombarda for authorising the use of Unforgiveable Curses towards the end of the war with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named._

 _The Ministry calls for every member of the public to stay calm and notify the DMLE if they see Black, but to not approach, as even without a wand he is extremely dangerous. A Floo address has been set up, any sightings are to be reported at the address 'Wizardwatch'._


	2. The Second Article

**Peter Pettigrew alive!**

 _In a shocking turn of events, yesterday saw the capture and subsequent detention of Peter Pettigrew – yes, the same Peter Pettigrew who was supposedly murdered by recent Azkaban escapee Sirius Black. Of Black himself, who escaped Azkaban three weeks ago, there is no trace._

 _Newly appointed head of the DMLE, Amelia Bones, had gone in early to work on the Black case. When she heard voices in the corridor, she went out to see who else might have wanted to come in early. She was greeted by the sight of two unknown men fleeing into the elevator._

 _Before she could pursue them, she stumbled across the prone form of Pettigrew, bound and stupefied. His left sleeve had been cut off above the elbow, leaving visible the Dark Mark, which was given by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. By the time she could send other Aurors in pursuit, the mystery men had already disappeared and so could not be held for questioning._

 _The discovery of the very much alive Pettigrew raises some interesting questions. Why was Black convicted of his murder when he was not, in fact, murdered? Who was responsible for the death of the 12 muggles, Black or Pettigrew? Were both Black and Pettigrew in the employ of You-Know-Who, or was only one of them? Who were the mystery men in the DMLE?_

 _Transcripts of the Black trial are proving elusive. We can only hope that Pettigrew will be tried soon and that at least some answers will be forthcoming._


	3. The Third Article

_**Pettigrew guilty of all charges, trial reveals**_

 _Yesterday marked the trial of Peter Pettigrew, marked Death Eater and erstwhile friend and later betrayer of James and Lily Potter._

 _After Pettigrew was discovered in the DMLE two months ago, petrified and bound and displaying the Dark Mark, many questions were raised regarding the events from Halloween 1981. New head of the DMLE Amelia Bones apparently does not believe in half measures, as she authorised the use of Veritaserum as soon as she possibly could._

 _The result of the questioning caused several shocks in the gallery, and will have repercussions that will be felt throughout wizarding Britain._

 _First and foremost, the crime for which Sirius Black languished in Azkaban was actually committed by Pettigrew: not only the murder of 12 muggles, but also the betrayal of the Potters to You-Know-Who. The Potters had gone under the Fidelius charm with Black as their Secret Keeper, but at a later date Black and Pettigrew switched places. Pettigrew also turned out to be an illegal animagus, with a rat as his form, which enabled him to make his escape when Black confronted him about his betrayal._

 _Furthermore, when inquiry was made into how Black's trial could have convicted him when he was innocent, a most startling answer emerged: Sirirus Black had never received a trial. He was apprehended on the scene of the crime, shipped to Azkaban immediately and left to rot there, while the wizarding world 'always knew' he was a true member of the infamous Black family._

 _The revelation will mean a thorough investigation into all current Azkaban inmates, as a check will have to be made that nobody else suffered such a gross miscarriage of justice._

 _Further questioning as to the identity of the men seen fleeing the DMLE prompted Pettigrew to name one of them 'the Doctor', but the other he claimed was none other than the elusive Sirius Black. In addition, he said they were helped in their capture of him by a Hogwarts aged Harry Potter._

 _With the memory of the war and the defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named still so recent in our memory and that of our readers, we all know that the Boy-Who-Lived is not anywhere near Hogwarts age. However, Pettigrew was also firmly convinced that he was caught in 1981, just days after the end of the war and on the same day that Black was taken prisoner. The Wizengamot ruled that Pettigrew must have been hit with a powerful Confundus at the time of his capture._

 _Pettigrew was sentenced to twelve years in Azkaban, where he will occupy the cell previously used for Sirius Black._

 _After the trial, the Minister asked that Sirius Black come forward, so that reparations can be made. If he does, the Daily Prophet will be sure to report on it._


	4. Chapter 1 - The Escape

_Chapter 1_

Padfoot lay with his head on his paws, staring sadly at the blank grey wall opposite his cot. Every now and then a soft whine escaped his throat, before he shifted and lay still again. Any other day, he would be sleeping around this time, but not today. Today he was feeling restless, as if every inch of his body was tingling, like his fur was trying and failing to stand on end. If he'd had more energy, he'd have been pacing, but as it was he settled for flicking his ears nervously.

He sensed that something significant was going to happen, in that way that animals have. If he turned back into his human form, the knowledge would be gone, even as the restlessness remained to baffle dulled human senses. The human mind would 'know' that nothing ever happened to break the monotony that was life in Azkaban, and would therefore disregard the charge in the air that spoke of change.

From out of nowhere a wind starting blowing, and Padfoot raised his head. When an odd noise joined the wind, things were sufficiently out of the ordinary that it was time for the human to take over. The dog jumped off the cot, and by the time a blue box had materialised in the middle of the cell, Sirius Black was crouching in the corner, trying to wrap his head around what he was seeing. His fingers were itching to draw his wand, even after two years of tender Dementor care.

The box was large enough that it left only a little room for movement in his cell. It was a deep blue, with glass panels along the upper half, and writing proclaiming it to be a Police Public Call Box. Next to the door hung a white plaque with more writing, too small to easily make out from his corner.

He could vaguely remember seeing some of these Police Boxes back in the day, on his jaunts into Muggle London with the Marauders. It was just that, for the life of him, he could not fathom why one of them would appear in his Azkaban cell.

For a long moment, nothing moved. The box staunchly refused to leave no matter how many times he blinked, and the wizard was too flummoxed to do more than stare – and blink, and stare again.

Then the door opened and a young boy stepped out. Sirius decided that it had finally happened. It had taken two years, give or take a couple of weeks, but the Dementor exposure had finally driven him insane. He wondered for a moment if he should mark his wall to commemmorate the occasion. After all, how else could one explain a 10-year-old James stepping out of a Muggle Police Box in the middle of Azkaban? Still, if he had known that his insanity was going to bring him visions like this, he'd have given in ages ago. Might as well go with it and see where his mind took him.

"James," he croaked. The boy turned slightly to the side to see who had spoken. If he was at all taken aback by the tangled hair, the wild eyes and the somewhat manic grin, he gave no sign of it.

"Hi there!" said James, with an easy grin that wiped away the past twelve years and transported Sirius back to his first Hogwarts Express ride and meeting his best friend and brother. The question that followed brought him right back to the present. "Could you perhaps tell me which planet we're on?"

The question was so far removed from anything his own brain could have come up with, that he automatically answered they were on earth, while starting to doubt his earlier self-diagnosis.

"Thank you. One moment please." With that, young James stuck his head back into the box and hollered. "You steered wrong again, Doctor! We're not on Trellis OR its moon, not even close! Please get down here and help me figure out why we're here. Other than your atrocious piloting!"

The sound of the boy's voice carried much further than it had any right to, but that little detail hardly fazed Sirius, who was familiar enough with wizardspace. So, a second person was present within the box. Judging by the mutters coming closer, he was about to join them outside.

"Should never have introduced you to Harkness. He rubs off, you never used to be so disrespectful of my steering."

The door opened wider and out stepped...

"Cousin Barty?"

And then, Sirius Black started laughing, in a way he had not had cause to laugh in more than two years. He collapsed onto his cot and buried his fingers in his hair, ignoring the puzzled look passing between the boy and the man.

"I can't decide if I've gone 'round the bend or not. I mean, I could understand my mind conjuring a 10-year-old James, sure. Not too sure about the Muggle box, but I can go with that. But to have him joined by his Death Eater cousin? Merlin's saggy balls, my mind could not have come up with that in a million years, no matter how insane I am."

The man was obviously talking more to himself than to his two visitors. "Who else have you got in that thing, Bella? Malfoy? Hell, You-Know-Who himself?"

"Umm..." It was the boy who took a tentative step forwards. "It's just the two of us, really. Who's James? Or cousin Barty?"

The last chuckles faded away with the boy's words. From this close and at eye level, he could see some differences between this boy and James, although even so the resemblance was uncanny. He could not be faulted for the mistake. But the eyes... he knew those green eyes, he was sure of it. In a different face, but...

He stared at the boy for a long moment, hardly daring to hope, but he had to say it. He needed it confirmed.

"You're Harry."

The boy glanced towards cousin Barty – or the person wearing Barty's face – before looking back at Sirius and nodding.

"If you know my name, does that mean you knew my parents? Is that the James you were talking about, James Potter?"

"Yes," he breathed. He reached out a hand to see if the boy was actually real and solid, but then he hesitated. Reality crashed into him with a nauseating thunk when he remembered the date. The extinguished hope was physically painful, somewhat akin (he imagined) to getting trampled by an Erumpent. His shoulders sagged.

"You can't be Harry. Harry is about three years old, not – what age are you, 9? 10? So I guess my mind does come up with the strangest ideas. Visions. Whatever you are."

"Oh, er, I think that one's on me," Barty's face said. "Harry is, in fact, three years old and living in... where did I pick you up, Harry? Surrey? I picked him up when he was about six, we've been travelling since. We've been trying to find anyone who knew James and Lily Potter, but someone," and he glared in the direction of the box, "decided that the time was never quite right. Well, until now, apparently. Sorry, did I introduce myself yet? I'm the Doctor, nice to meet you. Why is it getting colder here?"

His words drew attention to the fact that the cell was indeed getting chillier by the second. Sirius stared at the door, as if he could look through it. "It's the Dementors. They're drawn to the emotional upheaval happening here, not to mention two untasted souls – if you are real. Are you real?"

James – no, Harry, he'd have to get used to calling the boy by his name – rolled his eyes and grabbed his hand, squeezing hard. "Real enough for you? These Dementor types don't sound like good news, let's take this discussion into the TARDIS and preferably into the Vortex, unless you wanted to stay here, mister?"

Sirius was staring in wonder at the hand holding his. Not a vision, was all that his brain was telling him. He hardly heard anything else Harry had said. Even the Dementors amassing on the other side of the door could not drag out the bad memories like they usually did. The sheer amount of _relief_ he was feeling was not the type of happy memory Dementors knew what to do with, and it pushed their influence away better than anything else could.

 _Not a vision._

He was not mad, no matter what the situation looked like.

"No, not staying here." Less than eloquent, but it got the point across.

"Good. No, Doctor, you are not peeking at those creatures, and you're certainly not poking them with a stick. Get back here and take us away."

And with that, Harry dragged Sirius behind him, into the Police Box. They were followed closely by the Doctor, who bounded up the ramp, grinning like mad. "Oh, I am so coming back here at some point and getting a good look at them. They felt fascinating! Later, though. For now – Allons-y!"


	5. Chapter 2 - Time and Relative Dimension

_Chapter 2_

"So, to get back at our discussion which was so rudely interrupted by Dementors – explain to me again how I'm looking at a 10-year-old Harry?"

After Sirius got dragged into the Police Box, the Doctor had 'parked them in the Vortex', whatever that meant. Sirius had introduced himself; they'd gone to the kitchen for food and then to the library for easier conversation. This place was quite a lot bigger than the biggest wizardspace Sirius had ever seen, but that was a small detail. Hard as it was to believe, it appeared that he had not hallucinated the whole thing. Harry and the Doctor were real, which meant that in coming with them, he had escaped Azkaban without even realising it.

The Doctor answered his question, or tried to. "Ah... because of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. Wait, did I do the whole introductory speech thing yet? I don't think so, we were kind of preoccupied. See, my... vehicle... is called the TARDIS, which stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. You've witnessed the Relative Dimension part – I must say, you took that awfully well – but it's the Time part that will answer your question. The TARDIS travels through time.

"This is what happend. I picked up 6-year-old Harry three years from now. I don't usually travel with children, but I made an exception in his case. Let's say that there were issues with his guardians, and leave it at that.

"In that sense, 3-year-old Harry is still living with those poor excuses for human beings right now. Well, I say right now but really there's no present as such in the Vortex. Or it's all the possible presents at the same time, if you look at it from a different angle. So I meant, right now compared to your last viewpoint of time. Harry and I have been travelling together for about 4 relative years."

Sirius shook his head. "Merlin, and here I was thinking Time Turners induced headaches. And the Space in TARDIS, that's actual space travelling? That's why you asked me about the planet?"

Harry grinned and nodded. "Yup!" he said, popping the P. "Although we wind up somewhere other than what we were aiming for more often than not."

"Psh," the Doctor scoffed, "more interesting that way."

Sirius looked between the two of them, and the obvious familiarity of their argument, and felt the corners of his mouth turn up. It had been two years since he'd last smiled like this, not counting his bout of laughter earlier while he was still deciding whether or not he'd lost his mind. He was out of practice, but that did not make it any less genuine.

"Anyway," the Doctor continued, "did we set your mind at ease? You're quite convinced we're not hallucinations?"

Sirius nodded. "I might have to freak out over it all once I've had some time to process everything, but yes, I'm fairly sure this is actually happening."

"Good. Then it's your turn! Was that a prison cell we rescued you from? Did we break out a criminal? What's the story?"

Sirius stared at him for a moment. "You don't seem overly concerned by the prospect."

The Doctor shrugged. "Nah. You were unarmed, I'm stronger than I look, and if you were going to do anything, you'd have done it by now. That, and we've had worse. You look like death warmed over."

"Rude, Doctor," Harry interjected.

Sirius chuckled. "Probably true though. I haven't had a good couple of years. Alright, so here's my story." He leaned forward and rubbed his hands over his face. He was tired, but the shock value of the day, after two years of only tracking the passage of time by the meals, ensured that sleep would be long in coming anyway.

"I will start at the beginning for the sake of context. My name is Sirius Black, as I already told you, and I'm a wizard. When I was 11 I went to Hogwarts, the school for magic."

He told them all about meeting his friends, running away from home, getting taken in by James' family. Then later the war, the switch of Secret Keeper, the betrayal. He talked more than he had in two years, while the Doctor kept him supplied with water. Harry was hanging on his every word, especially when either of his parents were mentioned.

"So once the rat made his escape I think I went into shock. I don't remember what I did or said, but the Aurors showed up and whatever they saw, it was enough for them to arrest me and throw me into an Azkaban cell, where I've been ever since. No trial or anything, just guards endlessly accusing me of working with You-Know-Who, and the Dementors..." he shuddered for a moment.

Harry looked at him, more hesitant and somehow more vulnerable than he had been up to now.

"So you're my godfather? Is that... a big thing, with wizards, or is it just something that happens but doesn't really mean a lot?"

The look on his face was intent, while the Doctor regarded him with a sad smile on his face.

"It's a pretty big thing. However you look at it, the wizarding world is more violent and dangerous than the Muggle one, at least in day-to-day life. That's what happens when you give 11-year-olds a potentially lethal stick, I guess. Add to that the war, and people made damn sure they had double and triple backup plans for their children if anything should happen to them. If you swear a godfather oath, you bind yourself to look after a child as if they were your own. I will regret for the rest of my life that day when I left you in the care of Hagrid to pursue the rat, instead of taking you with me and making sure you were safe, on the other side of the world if that was what it took."

Harry fidgeted a little. "Would you do it now? If you could, I mean."

Sirius exhaled a long breath. "Oh pup, in a heartbeat. But if I show my face anywhere in wizarding Britain now, I'd be lucky to escape with either my life or my soul intact. I can't subject you to that."

The Doctor jumped up as if stung by a bee, and started pacing.

"Well, we'll have to do something about that, then, won't we? Correct me if I'm wrong – though I rarely am – but it seems to me that several things need to happen."

He held up his thumb to start counting on his fingers. "First we have to get you healthy, both physically and mentally. I'll do a scan later but I suspect you will need better care than I can provide in the TARDIS. Not to worry, though, I have an idea or two. B, we have to clear your name. Our best bet is to caputre the rat when he makes his escape, otherwise who knows where he'd end up. I'm so sorry but we won't be able to save you from your arrest. Don't want to create a paradox, do we?

"Then, if we want to allow Harry to live with you, the two of us will have to hop ahead to... 1990? Ish? Otherwise nobody'd believe he's actually Harry Potter. I'm not sure if the TARDIS will allow us several stops along the way to visit you, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. You should use that time to create a liveable home for your godson, don't you agree?"

Harry was the one to respond. "I... Doctor, do you want to get rid of me that much?" He was unable to keep the hurt out of his voice. The Doctor came over and kneeled next to where the boy was sitting, a soft expression in his brown eyes.

"Of course I don't want to get rid of you, Harry. I would happily travel many more years with you. But I know how you've always longed for a family of your own, and I also know I'm not quite up to snuff in the domestic department. Too much of a wanderer, me. This day was always coming, though. I won't forget you. We've had some good times together, eh? Brilliant, even. And it'll be some time before the actual goodbye. We'll just have to make the most of the time we still have!"

Harry gave a small smile, although he still looked sad at the impending separation. Then he threw his arms around the Doctor and hugged him tight. Sirius looked on, somewhat misty-eyed. He looked forward to the day his godson would hug him like that, but he could not begrudge the Doctor this – especially not if he could do everything he'd said.

Merlin, if that were true... he couldn't even wrap his head around the fact that he wasn't in Azkaban anymore, nevermind getting his name cleared and living with Harry. He was still tempted to believe it little more than a vivid dream, except dreams in Azkaban were never this good.


	6. Chapter 3 - How to Catch a Rat

_Chapter 3_

Sirius took a deep breath and held the air in his lungs for a moment, before looking up at the door and letting it go with a woosh. This was an important moment. If he had the Aurors on his back within minutes after stepping through that door, something was going to go wrong with the Doctor's plan. Good thing the TARDIS was close by in case he needed to make a run for it. Unfortunately they needed this step for the plan to succeed, so with another deep breath he gathered up his Gryffindor courage and stepped into the shop.

It felt like stepping back through time. The shop had not changed since the first time he'd set foot in it, gloomy atmosphere and all. Even the wicker chair in the corner was the same.

"Heir Black."

Dammit! He'd known to look out for the old man, and still he managed to sneak up on him!

"Mr. Ollivander," he replied, trying to slow his heartbeat.

"I was told to expect you today. After a new wand, are you? Whatever happened to the first one?"

"Ah... I don't really know right at this minute, though I expect I'll find out soon."

If the old wandmaker was confused by that statement, he gave no sign of it.

"Very well, let us find you a new one."

At least there were no Aurors, although that still did not mean anything about the end result of the Doctor's plan. Garrick Ollivander was an odd, odd man, and one might never know his reasons for doing – or not doing, as the case may be – anything.

Instead, what followed was an intense ten minutes waving one wand after another, until finally Ollivander produced a box from somewhere in the back that Sirius just knew was the one. He could feel the power reaching out to him even from a distance. When he took it, he smiled at the cascade of gold and silver sparks.

"Very good, Lord Black. Ash, ten inches, rather bendy, with a dragon heartstring core. May it serve you well.

"As you know, this being a second wand excludes you from the Ministry funding for new students. The price is 27 galleons, but it was already paid for by the same person who warned me of your coming. I don't know how they could have known which wand would choose you, but there you have it."

Sirius chuckled. "With the way my life has been going, I wouldn't worry about it too much. It'll only give you a headache. I know it does me. Thank you for your help."

Sirius wondered how exactly his life had come to this. As a teenager, rebelling against his bigoted parents, or later living with the Potters, he would not in a million years have dreamed that he would get thrown into Azkaban for a crime he didn't commit, let alone get rescued by a time-travelling alien and his own godson.

After the rescue, he'd spent two years on a planet called Lobos, where they specialised in memory recovery and general mental health, not only for humans but for all kinds of aliens as well. At the end of the two years, he'd been picked up by the exact same Harry and Doctor who had dropped him off. They'd just skipped ahead in the TARDIS without even one adventuring detour – a fact which had amazed Harry. It was the strangest feeling having lived through years, only to see the same 10-year-old Harry again.

A quick stop at Diagon "at some point in the future" had procured a wand, and here they were. So he actually could trace all the steps in his memory, and still it did not quite translate into understanding how exactly he came to crouch in a sewer, waiting for a rat.

The Doctor had explained that they could not prevent his arrest, because that would create a paradox, "and paradoxes are bad news, we don't want them, or the Reapers for that matter."

Sirius had thought it prudent not to inquire too deeply into what exactly these Reapers were, they sounded like they were on about the same level as Dementors in terms of nightmare fuel. Talking with the Doctor had already revealed to him that other than the Muggle and Magic worlds, there was a whole Alien world, not only in space but also on earth, that most people, wizards and witches included, had no idea existed. He could appreciate the poetic irony in that.

But even if his arrest was now a fixed point, because he had to be in Azkaban two years from now, there were things they could do. Since they didn't know the particulars about the rat's fate, they could catch him right after his escape, and bring him to justice at a better time.

And that was how he now found himself hiding in the sewers underneath Oxford street, which was the most likely place for the rat to escape to after their altercation. It was an odd sensation to know that he had lived through this day already, and the memories he carried from four years ago were happening right above his head. By this evening, he'd be in Azkaban. It was a good thing that he had decided, shortly after his rescue, to stop questioning his sanity.

Harry was concealed near the point of entrance, where the rat would appear. The Doctor had pinpointed the location with some kind of device he'd called a Probability Drive. Apparently it worked by feeding it as much information as possible, and it came out with the most likely scenario for a certain point in time. Unfortunately after the point of entry, the likelihood of the traitor going either way was about the same, so that was as far as the Probability Drive could take them. After that it was up to them.

Sirius and the Doctor were hidden on either side of the sewer corridor, before any branching occurred. Harry would let them know which way the rat went, at which point the other two would help to herd him into one of the cages Sirius had warded against animagery. They were banking on the animal's instincts taking over until it was too late, but even if he did have the presence of mind to turn human, he'd be outnumbered and wandless, disoriented and bleeding where he'd cut off his finger, and probably thinking he was seeing a ghost, as he'd just left Sirius up top and there was no way he could have come down here so quickly. In all, their chances of catching the traitor were quite good.

Suddenly he could hear the sound of an explosion in the distance, which meant the showdown was about to begin.

"My locator just went Ding," said Harry into his ear. They were communicating with some Muggle earpods which the Doctor had borrowed from a friend of his. Sirius wasn't at all sure what a tooth had to do with it or why it was blue, but it was better than anything wizards had come up with. For one thing, it was hands-free, and they could use it as a three-way communication device, compared to the two-way mirror he and James had charmed.

Sure enough, the Doctor's voice sounded next. "Jolly good! I love it when they go ding! Which way did he go?"

"Err... Left! Padfoot, you're up. We're coming your way."

Sirius straightened up out of his crouching position and checked his trap. The cage sat to one side under a notice-me-not charm. The rest of the walkway was taken up by conjured boxes and rubble that would force the rat to run right into the cage, unless he fancied going for a swim in filthy sewer water.

Movement up ahead warned him a moment before Harry said into his hear, "heads up, Padfoot!"

Sirius was tensed and ready for action by the time his sharp grey eyes picked up the rat's scurrying movements. He was obviously panicking, running as quickly as he could but veering off to the side of the walkway every now and again to see if he could find a way off, only to pick up the sound of footsteps behind him and running on again.

Just before the conjured obstacles, the rat noticed something wrong and skidded to a halt. Sirius was not sure if it was because the rat could smell him or the magic, but he tried to turn and go the other way... where he met Harry and the Doctor walking abreast.

He turned back and seemed indecisive for a moment, but then he scurried to the walkway's edge and plunged into the smelly water.

Sirius strode up to the point where he'd gone over and pointed his wand. He couldn't do a summoning charm, as he did not want to find out what would happen if he said "accio rat" in a sewer. But there were other options. "Oh no you don't! Wingardium Leviosa!"

The rat was neatly lifted out of the water and with a sharp tug he was deposited just in front of where the cage sat innocently waiting. Spotting the apparent gap, the rat sprinted towards it, only for Sirius to wave his wand, slamming the cage door and cancelling the notice-me-not just when Harry and the Doctor caught up with him.

"Nicely done, Padfoot! Good thing he came your way, if he'd gone towards the Doctor chances are he'd have gotten away. Either that, or someone would have ended up in the water!"

Sirius barked a laugh when the Doctor protested, "Oi! I'm not that bad, brat!"

Harry just laughed. Then he looked curiously at the cage, and the frantically squeaking rat inside. "So that's Peter Pettigrew, is it? He's not much to look at."

Sirius picked up the cage and brought it to eye-height. "Don't let his appearance fool you. Peter might not be as handsome as your father or yours truly – spoken in all humility, of course – and he was a somewhat average wizard, but he was dead clever. He was very good at poking holes in our pranks until we had them foolproof. Without him we'd have been caught so many more times.

"Now lets get back to the TARDIS and see how close to my escape we can deliver him – not that it matters too much, I guess, I'll be unfindable for the same amount of time. Just... preferably soon enough that I can make my house habitable for a 10-year-old, eh?" He wiggled his eyebrows, making Harry laugh again, before the three of them turned to where they'd left the TARDIS.


	7. Chapter 4 - The Capture, part II

_Chapter 4_

To say that Peter Pettigrew was confused would be an understatement. Too many things had happened in too short a time. Everything had just spiralled out of control.

First he'd been made Secret Keeper for the Potters, information which he'd brought to the Dark Lord, because there was nothing else he could have done with sensitive information of that kind. That had backfired spectacularly when His Darkness managed to get himself blown up – a feat for which he'd no doubt be blamed by the Death Eathers. Then he was chased by his former friend, Sirius Black, who was relentless in his pursuit.

Right at the last moment, when Padfoot had cornered him, he managed to call out an accusation, even though he couldn't be sure that his words would reach wizard ears. Still, his next action would have ensured Auror presence, as he had bombarded the street behind him and cut off his finger. Then he transformed into his rat form to escape into the sewers.

And that was the point at which he'd lost all control of the situation. Almost as soon as he'd entered the sewers, he'd sensed people close by. The chances of anyone needing to be here just this minute were extremely low, but on the other hand wizards wouldn't even have known about this whole sewage system, so he didn't think it likely that they were here for him. Probably they were Muggles doing some kind of maintenance job or something.

In any case he could not risk turning into his human form, thereby threatening the Statute of Secrecy and thus revealing he was alive to the Ministry. He could probably kill them to cover his tracks, but he didn't really have the stomach for cold-blooded killings. No, his best course of action was to continue and let them see only a rat running along, a normal sight in this environment. He did try and get off the walkway a few times, but the footsteps behind him were as relentless as Sirius had been the past couple of days, so he opted rather to keep running ahead.

It wasn't until further along the corridor that he realised that something was very, very wrong. Up ahead he smelled something familiar – but it couldn't be. He'd just left Padfoot up above the ground, to be found by the Aurors. And yet, his nose had not betrayed him yet. With a sharp turn he headed the other way, only to encounter the two Muggles. Only they couldn't be, could they, because they were looking right at him, and one of them was... was...

But he was dead! The Dark Lord had killed him, and his wife. He knew that for sure. He'd checked the house after the explosion, before fleeing the scene. How could James be coming towards him now?

His little rat stomach turned, and he felt like he could faint any moment, only he couldn't. Now was a time for action, and so he took the only path that would lead him away from both of his former friends. He jumped off the walkway and into the brackish sewer water. He'd only just started paddling when he heard familiar words. One of the first charms they had ever learned, all the way back in first year. It had stood them in good stead for many a prank, but now he cursed the charm from the bottom of his heart.

As he was moved out of the water and back to the walkway, he could see that it really was Padfoot who'd caught him. He thought for a moment that he might be heading for the other wizard's hands, in which case he could bite and then make a run for it, but instead he was dropped near the wall. Of course, a wingardium could not be directed quite so easily as an accio. He didn't question his good fortune, but scrambled towards the gap between the wall and the boxes. He felt as though if he could only clear the gap, he'd have made good his escape.

He did not see the tell-tale shimmer of a disillusioned object. Instead, he realised his mistake only after he heard a click. He'd run straight into a trap.

The cage in which he found himself did not look very sturdy. Not for a human, anyway, although it was plenty sturdy for a rat. When he tried to change back, however, he found that Sirius had thought of this possibility and had charmed it against transformations. He was well and truly trapped.

The two people who had helped capture him approached. He should probably try to make sense of everything they were saying, but the panic was stronger. The animal's instincts were taking over.

By the time he'd calmed down enough to huddle in one corner of the cage, rather than running in circles and squeaking, he was being carried somewhere and talk was scarce. All he could make out was that they were no longer in the sewers, although they were still somewhere indoors.

Eventually they came to a door, which led to a bare room. His cage was placed in the middle of the floor and the door opened. For a moment he sat still, wondering – again – what was happening, but when he felt his transformation being forced on him, he hurried to leave the cage.

By the time he was completely human again, he was alone. He prowled around the room, but he could not even find where the door was, nevermind any place where he could escape. Worse, when he tried to revert back to his rat form, which was the only bit of wandless magic he was capable of, he found it impossible. He'd suspect anti-transformation wards like there had been on the cage, but in that case he'd have stayed a rat.

No, it was more likely that all magic was suppressed somehow. Were there wards even capable of doing that? He had no idea, but it was the most likely explanation. There was just no way to check his theory, without a wand he was helpless anyway and he'd had to leave his own behind to make sure they'd really think him dead.

Soon, a screen that he had not noticed before lit up, showing a somewhat familiar face – the third person who had caught him, whom he had not paid much attention to before.

"Barty Junior?" But that wasn't quite right, was it? Barty Crouch, one of the more fanatical of the Dark Lord's followers, had never once, as far as he was aware, grinned quite so exuberantly.

"You, too?" Barty said. "I must really look like that fellow. Hi, I'm the Doctor. I'm sure you have some questions?"

Right, so... just a lookalike.

"Err... where am I?" he asked, casting his eyes about the room, where the only thing of even remote interest was the screen.

"Oh, you're in the zero room! I finally got around to rebuilding it after that one time it got jetissoned. Lovely little room, cuts you off from the influences of the universe. The screen we're talking through only works because they're both part of the TARDIS, I won't bore you with the details. Point being, we found out that magic can be found everywhere in the universe, which got us out of a pickle or two. Except in the zero room! You'll be nice and cosy there for the journey, so just sit tight and you'll be out in a jiffy! Well, and into the tender care of the police – or what were they called, Aurors?"

"Look, er, Doctor, I think there's been some misunderstanding here. Can't I come up and we talk about it like civilised people?"

The Doctor looked to the side of the screen for a moment, then he turned back to Peter. "I have a couple of people here who are fairly sure there has been no misunderstanding. I will leave the screen to them."

The brown-haired man ducked out of sight, to be replaced by a face he knew all too well.

"Padfoot, my old friend!"

Sirius glowered at him. "You don't get to call me that, Pettigrew."

Peter blinked. Sirius hadn't called him by his last name since early first year. He guessed he deserved it. Still, always try to find a way out, was his creed.

"Look, I can explain everything!"

"Alright." The other man crossed his arms, a forbidding look on his face. "James and Lily, Pettigrew. Explain that, if you would. You were their Secret Keeper. We switched places, and one week later they're dead. One bloody week, Pettigrew. You could not have switched to another again in that time, or the magic would have collapsed.

"Or, if you're in an explaining mood, how about your little framing job just now, eh Pettigrew? Make everyone believe I'm a mass murderer, escape to the good life yourself? You got me locked up in Azkaban for two years. Merlin knows how much longer I'd've been there if the Doctor hadn't showed up?

"I guess you can't be blamed for the wizarding world deciding I didn't deserve a trial. Or, you know, the fucking Aurors not checking _which wand cast that curse_. You're still damn lucky I've had a couple of years away from Dementor influence and with proper mental care, or you likely would not have survived an encounter with me."

Peter's confusion burst into full bloom during Sirius' rant.

"I... I... How can I have done any of that? You were free earlier today, you're free now. You can't have spent two years in Azkaban!"

The Doctor came back into view. "That one's on me! See, what happened was wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff."

"Wibbly wobbly..."

"Timey wimey, yes." The Doctor nodded decisively, as if that cleared everything up. Peter stared, waiting for more.

A third voice could be heard. "I don't think you cleared up any confusion, Doctor. You just added to it. You're good at that."

The face that the voice belonged to showed up on the screen, and Peter stared again. No wonder he'd thought James had come from him. If someone had cast a Gemini charm on James when he first rode the Hogwarts Express, the result could not be closer.

The boy turned to face the screen, looking coldly at Peter. "What the Doctor is trying to say, if somewhat less eloquently than usual, is that he picked me up when I was 6, we rescued Sirius in the year that I turned 3 while I was 10 years old, and we caught you now, when I'm still the same age as the rescue but also one-and-a-half and only just orphaned due to your telling You-Know-Who where I lived. In other words, time travel. Figured out who I am yet?"

He could hardly believe it, but there was only one possible answer. "H... Harry?"

"Yes, Harry. The boy whose parents you betrayed, and whose godfather you framed."

Peter's shoulders slumped. He was not getting out of this one. He couldn't even discount the whole time travel explanation, not with James' face looking at him with Lily's eyes.

"So what happens now?"

"Now we travel to a time after Sirius escaped," came the Doctor's reply. "You'll stay in the zero room until that time, at which point you will be handed over to the Aurors – lovely word, that.

"What happens then is up to the Aurors, of course, but at a guess I'd say a trial is likely. If you'll excuse me, I have to go make sure we land in the right timezone."

The Doctor flashed him a grin and left the screen again, taking the friendliest face on the screen with him. Peter was left with two pairs of eyes, one grey and one green, staring coldly at him.

Sirirus was the one to break the silence.

"Why did you do it?"

There were several things Sirius could be asking about, but the heartbroken look in his eyes made it clear he meant betraying James and Lily.

"I learned some things about myself since we graduated, Sirius. One of them is that I cannot handle pain and torture. The Dark Lord – he's very inventive when it comes to inflicting pain on other people. I was captured in the summer after graduation, did you know that? They came up to our house one day, four Death Eaters. I was alone, and they easily overpowered me and took me to Him.

"I'm ashamed to admit it did not take them very long to break me. I promised Him I would serve Him, anything to make the pain stop. I guess there was one other option open to me, but that is another thing I learned: I don't want to die. I also do not have the self-sacrificing nature that seems so common among Gryffindors.

"At first I thought I might turn spy for the Light, but that option was taken from me. After my promise, he tore through my pitiful Occlumency shields and found every instance of defiance, and squashed them like a bug. I had no choice but to obey Him. I tried to keep out of the thick of things, so that I would have nothing to report to Him, but even that was punished severely. And then you suggested that switch, and I couldn't have kept that from him even if I'd tried. So I told him.

"Tell me, Sirius. Would you have done differently, if you'd worn my hat?"

Sirius leaned closer with an intent look in his eyes.

"I would have died for them."

And then he left, apparently done with the conversation. That left only Harry.

"You understand me, don't you, Harry? That I had no choice?" He desparately wanted someone to agree with him, that he could not have done anything else.

Harry shrugged, although he did not lose the cold look in his eyes.

"Maybe. It's not like I've been in your position, so I wouldn't know how cowardly I'd be. The Doctor usually manages to get me out of any sticky situation long before much torturing occurs.

"What I fail to understand is your framing Sirius. You already knew Voldemort was gone, so you can't have been afraid of him. Afraid of his followers, maybe, but there was no Death Eater trailing you, was there? Just a friend who wanted to know why you'd betrayed them. And what do you do, rather than give him the answer you gave just now? You killed 12 people, and condemned your friend to hell on earth. And consequently me as well. No, you don't get much understanding from me.

"Anyway, sounds like we're landing. It's not my problem just how much you're not worthy of being called a Gryffindor. From here, it's up to the Aurors to make sure you face the consequences of your actions, since you couldn't bring yourself to. I would wish you a good day, but I doubt it will do much good."

Harry stood up, regarding him with sad eyes. Lily's eyes. Then the screen went blank, leaving only a stretch of wall.

For some time, nothing happened. The room was as bare as before, the door still invisible. Trying to transform felt a bit like poking a wound just to see if it still hurt, and yet he could not stop.

Then the door opened, and Harry stood on the other side.

"Come on out, nice and slow," he said.

Peter approached, calculating whether it would be worth it to try and rush the boy, who appeared to be unarmed. Deciding he didn't have anything to lose, he started to run, but Harry twisted away from the door, almost as if he had expected it.

Just as Peter reached the threshold, he stumbled over nothing into the hallway. The last thing he heard was "Stupefy, Petrificus totalus, Incarcerous!" before the first spell hit and everything went black.

He wouldn't wake up again until after he was in a Ministry holding cell, where the world made sense again, except for the year. If he ignored the fact that it was two years later, he could almost pretend he had imagined the whole episode, and the Aurors had just arrested him at the scene of the crime. Because of course he had not met 10-year-old Harry, how could he have? Even in the impossible year of 1984, the boy was not even close to that age, and thus it did not happen.


	8. Chapter 5 - Delivery Service

_Chapter 5_

It seemed that the TARDIS was of the same mind as her travellers for once. The Doctor 'tasted' the air (Sirius was unsure how else to describe what the man was doing), consulted an odd kind of watch and took some readings on the TARDIS console. Shortly after he announced that they had landed about three weeks after Sirius' escape from Azkaban.

They cautiously exited the TARDIS to find out where exactly they were, the Doctor in front and Sirius in last place, with the stupefied Pettigrew in tow. They'd landed in a cavernous hall, filled with glass balls about the size of a tennis ball. Nobody approached them as they made their way down the middle aisle, all they could hear was the echo of their footsteps. It was all rather eerie, an impression that was not at all helped by the candles illuminating the place with blue flames, rather than the customary yellow.

"I know where we are," whispered Sirus. "I've never been, but from descriptions I've heard, I'd say we're in the Hall of Prophecies. Every True Prophecy ever made is automatically recorded here in those orbs. The ones that are glowing still need to come true. Only the subject of the prophecy can take it from its place on these shelves."

"Well that's not very smart, is it?" The Doctor's voice was not nearly as soft and reverential as the place seemed to demand. "What if interested third parties wanted to study them?"

Sirius shrugged, although the Doctor could not see the gesture. "I never inquired," he answered out loud. "I assume there's some kind of copying spell that they can use, which they only teach to Unspeakables.

"The point is, the Hall of Prophecies is located in the Department of Mysteries, and that is on the lower levels of the Ministry of Magic. We only need to go up a couple of levels to get to the DMLE headquarters and leave our package there to be found. Maybe we don't even need to go that far up, just leave hime somewhere where he's likely to be discovered."

"Ha!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Anyone who'd like to comment on my piloting skills now?"

He looked over his shoulder to wink at Harry, who chuckled. "Yes, you're a very good pilot, Doctor, and you never ever land somewhere you weren't aiming for."

As Sirius stifled a laugh, Harry turned around to where the TARDIS was standing and mouthed 'thank you, girl', before facing forward again and smiling innocently when the Doctor looked at him suspiciously.

Deciding to let the matter drop, the Doctor addressed Sirius. "Any ideas on where we can go up a few levels?"

"We need to find a circular room with lots of doors. There's a spell to find the exit once we're there."

The Doctor grinned. "Allons-y!"

At the end of the Hall, they found a door that led to a new chamber. This one was filled with clocks in all shapes and sizes. The Doctor stumbled for a moment, overcome by a dizzy spell. "What?" he asked incredulously as he righted himself and looked around. His eyebrows drew together when he observed a crystal bell jar, where a hummingbird was endlessly hatched and... re-egged?... as it travelled from the bottom to the top and back again.

"What?" he repeated. Another two stumbling steps into the room had Harry rushing forward to support him. He didn't seem to notice as he looked dazedly around, repeating for the third time. "What?"

"Get the door," Harry told Sirius, indicating the doorway opposite the one they'd entered through. "We need to get him out of here, now!"

Sirius hurried forward and yanked the door open. They piled through, into a large circular chamber. The door closed behind them with an audible click, and before they could react the walls started to spin, the candles in their brackets leaving blue streaks in their wake.

The Doctor lay on the chamber's floor where he'd fallen. "What," he asked inbetween pants, "was that?"

Sirius watched the doors come to a standstill, while Harry answered the Doctor. "Looked like a room where they were studying Time. At a guess, I'd say it was playing havoc on your Time sense, Doctor. Anyway, I think we reached the place Padfoot was talking about?"

Sirius nodded. "Let me check the time first, to see how likely we are to meet people. I'm officially still a fugitive, so we don't really want to meet anyone. Judging by the lack of activity up to now, I'd say it's either evening or early morning."

He cast a quick Tempus, making glowing golden numbers appear above the tip of his wand.

"Seven in the morning. That's good, it means most people won't have started their day yet. If we dump him quite near to the elevator, people will stumble over him once they start arriving. It doesn't give us a lot of time to get him there, though."

He pointed his wand at the nearest door and muttered a vaguely Latin-sounding phrase. The Doctor, who had stood up by then, had an odd look on his face, like he was bursting to say something but opted to watch instead. A soft blue light left Sirius' wand and travelled to one of the many doors, infusing it until it glowed faintly. Sirius gestured to it. "After you! We need the elevator at the end of that corridor."

They went through the corridor in the same order as before, Pettigrew bobbing along last in line. At least the torches here were burning the right colour. Sirius was just glad that he had remembered the exit spell, which he'd only cast once before, on a tour of the Ministry back during Auror training. He'd had no other business in the Department of Mysteries before the betrayal happened.

Once inside the elevator, he dropped to rat unceremoniously to the floor and said 'Department of Magical Law Enforcement' out loud, causing the grille to close and the elevator to rise.

"Doctor, just ask your question," sighed Harry. "You're giving me the jitters."

And indeed the Doctor was practically bouncing on his feet. "What was that language? It sounded Latinish... Latiny? But it wasn't Latin, the language circuits didn't pick it up. Come to think of it, you're alwyas using words like that to make your magic work. Harry's magic is more intuitive, but then we had to discover most of that as we went along. Do you think your words are more like... a magical language not in our translation circuit, or are they more nonsense words that wizards invented, but the most important thing is the intent behind it?"

Sirius snorted. "You're such a Ravenclaw, Doctor. Why don't we talk about that when we're not breaking into the Ministry? We're here."

And indeed a cool voice overhead declared them to be at the DMLE. This time Sirius floated the traitor in front of them. He took about ten steps into the corridor, where he dropped his package right in the middle of the floor, where he'd be sure to be found first thing.

As they retraced their steps to the elevator, Sirius said "Well, that went..."

In unison, Harry and the Doctor cried out, "Don't say it!" but, the 'smoothly' was already out there, and it was too late. From further along the corridor, a door opened, and a brown-haired with wearing a monocle stepped out, probably to investigate who had operated the elevator. The Doctor quickly thrust both Sirius and Harry back, hoping the witch wouldn't be able to see them clearly. It left him more visible, but then he wasn't known in the wizarding world – apart from the whole Barty Crouch thing.

"What... who are you?" the witch asked, her monocle dropping in her astonishment.

"Ah... Delivery service?" the Doctor grinned cheekily and took a step backwards with a wave, quickly closing the grille while Sirius called out their destination – loud enough for the elevator to start moving, hopefully quietly enough that the monocled witch hadn't heard it.

"She'll have to go past Pettigrew to get to the elevator door. If there aren't too many others working she might get distracted with him and not follow us until we've reached the TARDIS. What was she doing, working at seven in the morning?"

Sirirus raised his hand. "Probably something to do with me. I did escape a supposedly inescapable prison three weeks ago, after all."

Soon after, they were back in the circular chamber, looking at all the possible doors. Only one was marked with a large X that Sirius had drawn on the exit door. There was no choice but to start opening doors to find the Time chamber again, from where they could access the Hall of Prophecies.

In the first room they stepped into, there were no clocks, but rather a sort of amphitheater centred around an archway with a gently fluttering Veil. Sirius felt strangely drawn to it. He almost thought he could hear Prongs and Lily-flower whispering, as if he could talk to them, if only he stepped just a little bit closer.

The Doctor's voice snapped him out of it. "What is that doing here?" he demanded almost angrily. "That's a Vanguard Arch of the Shillelaigh Empire. And active, to boot! Humans were never meant to use that. I didn't even know a scouting party had come this far in the galaxy. You're all very, very lucky the Shillelaigh Emprie died out ages ago, or you'd've had an invasion of giant locusts on your hands. There's a standing order from the Shadow Proclamation to deactivate these on sight, just in case they start swarming again. Let me see, how did that work again?"

The Doctor knelt in front of the dais, where he removed one of the stones – or rather, the facade of a stone, revealing a strange board filled with little knobs and levers.

Sirius stared. "The Unspeakables never knew that was there?" he asked incredulously.

The Doctor looked back at him for a moment. "They wouldn't have known what to look for. There's a trick to opening the dashboard cover that you really need to know in order to open it, otherwise it just looks like any other stone. You lot don't have a monopoly on perception filters, you know."

"What's a perception filter?" asked Sirius, but the Doctor had turned back to the dashboard and taken out a pair of glasses with a thick black rim while he was talking, and now he perched them on the end of this nose. He started fiddling with the levers, apparently too focussed on his task to reply, if he had even heard the question.

Harry evidently had, though. "That notice-me-not charm you used on the cage. That's a perception filter," he replied as he came back from prowling around the arch. "Hurry, Doctor," he continued, turning to the softly muttering alien. "We don't know how quickly that woman could get backup and we still need to even find the TARDIS."

"I know, just give me a moment, I've almost got it. Just need to cross over the Cytrin Bypass and... there, that should do it," he said. The result of his fiddling soon became apparent, as the fluttering Veil fell silent, no longer moved by an unearthly wind. The whispers likewise stopped.

The Doctor quickly replaced the cover and then stood and dusted off his hands. "Right, that's that. Let's go find the TARDIS."

They went back into the circular chamber, where Sirius again marked the door, before they let the walls revolve again.

Harry picked the next door, but again there was no Time chamber behind it. Instead they found a large tank, filled with...

"Are those brains?" Harry asked.

The Doctor, in the meantime, was gritting his teeth so hard Sirius could hear it. "What is wrong with you people? Why do you insist on playing around with things you don't understand?" he asked in a strangled whisper. "First that Arch kept active – used as an execution chamber, no doubt, and now this. You have _Harmony Shoals_ brains swimming around in a tank? It's like you _want_ to get invaded! Rassilon, magic or no magic, you're still just a bunch of stupid apes. It's Ghosting Hour all over again. Canary wharf waiting to happen."

Sirius didn't know what the Doctor was talking about, and thought he probably didn't want to know. Harry nodded his head back to the door, and put his hand on the Doctor's arm. He thought about pointing out that if you didn't poke at things you didn't understand, you'd be stuck forever, but now was not the time.

"Do your thing, Doctor, but hurry. We should find the right room soon."

The Doctor nodded, his face still pinched in anger. "They seem to be dormant, and unprotected. A good sonic blast should take care of them."

With that, he pulled out a silver wand from his pocket, aimed it at the tank and pushed a button. Sirius was glad Harry had dragged him all the way back to the door, as even here he had to clap his hands over his ears at the high-pitched whine emanating from the wand. The brains writhed under the onslaught, but soon they stopped moving altogether and sank to the bottom of the tank. The Doctor ran back to them, and in short order the door was marked and they could choose the next one.

"What was that?" Sirius asked Harry.

The boy grinned at him. "Sonic screwdriver."

Sirius nodded, as if that answer helped him, then he furrowed his brow as he realised that, no, actually it didn't clarify anything. "What's a screwdriver?"

He was not really prepared for the laughter bubbling up in the young boy. "Sorry," said Harry when he'd calmed down a little. "But that's the first time someone hears about the sonic screwdriver and their stumbling block is the screwdriver part, rather than the sonic part. Let's pick that door."

This time they were in luck. The door opened to the clock-filled chamber. Sirius didn't want to think about the havoc the Doctor could wreak here. To be fair, he also didn't want to think about the havoc he'd already wrought with his actions. The Department of Mysteries was going to be in an _uproar_ later today. The only thing that saved this room from the destruction the other two had faced was the dizzyness the Doctor experienced here.

Knowing what would happen once they crossed the threshold, Sirius ended the markings on the doors and came to stand next to the Doctor, Harry on his other side. Together, they managed to cross the room in just a few steps, stumbling out of the other side before the Time Lord could be too badly influence by the Time Chamber. Sirius quickly closed the door, before the Doctor could get any ideas about trying anything from outside the chamber.

From here it should be a clear run to the TARDIS, but of course that would have been too simple. Harry veered suddenly to the right. "Doctor! I'm feeling a pull in my magic!"

He dashed between two rows of shelves, with the other two quickly following. The boy slowed down until he was looking at one particular prophecy orb. Sirius read the plaque below the orb. There was a date from about four years ago, and then 'S.P.T. To A.P.W.B.D., Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter'.

Sirius nudged his arm. "Looks like there was a prophecy made about you. Take that orb and bring it to the TARDIS, but right now lets get out of here!"

Harry blinked and nodded. He grabbed the orb from its place on the shelf, and together the three of them went back to the main corridor. They were only just in time, as the door to the Time Chamber opened and two wizards came out. One of them pointed. "There they are!"

The two wizards started running, but the three of them were closer to the TARDIS already. With a sprint they reached her doors and ran through, since the Doctor had opened them with a snap of his fingers.

"I usually try to make that a more dramatic moment," he explained while dancing around the console to park them in the Vortex, "but needs must!"


	9. Chapter 6 - Preparing a Home

_Chapter 6_

"So, when to now?" asked Harry, after they'd recovered from the mad dash into the TARDIS. He was sitting on the battered old pilot seat, his feet swinging. The Doctor was fiddling with the console, and Sirius was propped up against the railing with his arms crossed.

"Now to bed, young man. We've had quite a bit of excitement, and if I'm going to be responsible for you, I had better start acting like it."

The Doctor turned to face them with a grin. "After that, though, I'm aiming for around the trial of our package. Once he's been convicted, your name will be cleared and you can start reintegrating into society." Harry and Sirius laughed at the exaggerated shudder visible during those words. "Harry, we'll also take a peek at that prophecy you're still holding. We need to know what kind of hogwash we're dealing with."

"You're familiar with prophecies then, Doctor?" asked Sirius.

"Eh, a bit. I've been the subject once. Well, maybe twice. Well, maybe a couple of times. Seers like to be right, so they're vague at best and self-fulfilling at worst. Not a good basis for your actions, if you ask me. Still, better to be aware if you do find yourself embroiled in one of those things. Knowledge is power, after all."

The Doctor strolled into the TARDIS, whistling a jaunty tune. He held a newspaper tucked under his arm. Harry and Sirius were waiting, the one impatiently and the other nervously.

The Doctor held out the newspaper to the older wizard, while his mouth stretched into his customary grin. "We did it."

Sirius took it and skimmed the article, then started at the top again to read through it more slowly, an answering grin blossoming on his handsome face. "I'm free. I don't have to hide anymore. Or, you know, hop around in time."

He had tears in his eyes as he blindly reached out for Harry. The young boy stepped gladly into his embrace.

"I can start living again. We can be a family, Harry."

"There's even a call for you to come forward, so they can offer you reparations for wrongfully imprisoning you," the Doctor said.

Sirirus smiled at him through his tears, then let go of Harry to pull the Doctor into a hug as well. "Thank you, Doctor. I don't want to know what would have happened if you had not landed in my cell."

Harry quickly wrapped his arms around the other two. They stood like that for a moment, until the Doctor's boundless energy could no longer be contained that way.

Sirius took a deep breath while standing in front of the fireplace. It was a public fireplace, located in a small wizarding pub in the far north of the country. There were currently no patrons in the pub who could gawk at him, either because they did or did not believe in his innocence. Only the bartender, and he seemed to be on the believing side. At least he kept his comments to himself.

Sirius had been exchanging owls with Amelia Bones, the head of the DMLE. She had asked him to come to her office for the official pardon. He knew intellectually that nothing bad would happen. He'd seen the articles in the Daily Prophet, detailing the rat's trial. They had found out exactly who had been the Potter's Secret Keeper, how he'd faked his own death, and exactly who had cast the curse that killed all those Muggles. And yet, some part of him was terrified that he would step trhough the flames only to be awaited by a squad of Aurors, to be carted right back to Azkaban.

Still, nothing was going to move forward unless he actually went there. He was too late for some kind of grand entrance into the rat's trial, so they'd decided the pardon itself would be a private affair, although he'd be giving a press conference afterwards.

Sirius just wished that the Doctor and Harry could be there, but that was an impossible wish. The boy was the completely wrong age for this year, and the Doctor wasn't usually one to stay around for the conclusions to his interferences.

With another deep breath, he gathered his Gryffindor courage, threw some Floo powder on the fire, and called out "Amelia Bones' Office!"

When he stepped out, he was greeted not by the half-feared Auror squad, but by the same monocled witch who'd almost caught them dropping off Pettigrew. She came forward with an extended hand and no sign that she had any idea he'd been part of that expedition.

"Mister Black, welcome."

Sirius brushed away some of the soot from his robes and then shook the offered hand. "Madam Bones."

She invited him to sit and then looked searchingly into his face.

"You look remarkably well for having just spent two years in Azkaban or on the run. You led us on quite the merry chase, didn't you? First you escaped, then three weeks later Peter Pettigrew just happens to get delivered on our doorstep, so to speak, acting very confused about the date. From that time until several weeks after the trial there is no trace of you, despite several attempts at finding you. And then suddenly I start receiving owls from you. Would you mind explaining what happened?"

Sirius dragged a hand through his hair and chuckled ruefully. "It's a bit of a long story. Or perhaps not long so much as really bloody difficult to believe. Honestly, I find it hard to believe, and I lived through it."

And so he explained some things about a stranger with wild hair and a familiar face, and a blue box that could travel anywhere. He left out Harry's involvement, as well as the whole time-travelling issue. He did tell her about his own part in the capture of one Peter Pettigrew, although he made it sound like they'd just tracked him down after Sirius' own escape. She'd have made the connection with the blue box spotted in the Department of Mysteries, so there was no reason to conceal that part.

As their conversation continued, he found himself gradually relaxing. Amelia Bones was a witch of her word. She'd promised him an exoneration, and that was what he was getting. After this, he could get to work on clearing his name in the wider wizarding world. The change in perception from 'murderer and You-Know-Who's right hand man' to 'framed and innocently incarcerated' would not happen overnight, regardless of the DMLE's official stance.

And then he also had a house to prepare for Harry's arrival in just a few years. He wanted to give his godson only the best, not only because of their bond, but also as an apology for not making him his first priority on that fateful Halloween night. What would their lives have looked like if he had not relinquished his hold on the small body in his arms to Hagrid, leaving room for thoughts of vengeance on Peter?

Well, it was no use dwelling on a past that could no longer be changed, not even with a TARDIS – something about crossing your own time stream, and the Doctor's, and the catastrophic results from that combination. The shudder accompanying that statement had convinced Sirius that the Doctor was speaking from experience.

All he could do now was to move forward.

Arms crossed and leaning against a wrought-iron fence, Sirius regarded the houses in front of him. Once upon a time, they'd been the epitome of fashion, frequented by the lords and ladies of the ton, both Muggle and Wizard. Those glamorous days were long past, and the neighbourhood had sunk into oblivion. Rubbish littered the square, and the plaster crumbled off several facades. The only remnant of bygone days was the house with the number 12, but it was a fossil clinging desparately to the glories of the past. Sirius snorted at his own thoughts. Really, the whole house was just one giant metaphor for wizarding society as a whole, wasn't it?

He sighed and pushed off from the fence. Amelia had told him that his father had passed away about a year ago, a fact he could not bring himself to care much about. Their relationship had never been a good one, and only noteworthy in that he would use it as an example of how not to deal with Harry.

More to the point, his grandfather Arcturus had never officially disinherited him, despite his mother's wishes. He'd already been to see the old man to ask what he was about. The conversation had left him somewhat the wiser, although not in terms of understanding his grandfather. He was Heir to the Black fortune and had the title of Lord Black waiting for him once the old man flew the thestral, or sooner if he just abdicated.

Interestingly enough, he also approved of Sirius' plan for dealing with his harridan of a mother, which was to arrange for a nice little house for her, where she could spend the rest of her days spewing vitriol to her house-elf Kreacher, or his successor. He'd even allow visits from her circle of 'friends', or let her visit them, so long as she kept her poisonous tongue far away from him and his godson.

He slowly entered the house and walked to the parlour where she was most likely skulking at this time of the day. As he had understood from Arcturus, her habits had not changed much since he'd left home. When he heard the shrill voice, he knew he had guessed correctly.

"Who's there?" she asked, because Merlin forbid she lift one foot to go and see for herself. "Kreacher, is that you?" So, the old codger had survived, had he? Pity. Then again, weeds were notoriously hard to get rid of.

Before she could ask another question, he had reached the parlour door. When she saw his face, she was rendered speechless. He was realistic enough to know it would not last long.

"Hello, mother."

"Bombarda!"

Sirius attacked the wall with savage glee. There were probably better construction spells he could be using, but he was very much enjoying the chance to reduce part of the house of his miserable childhood to rubble. He might have to contract a construction firm to build things up again into the image he had in his head, but for now there were some more walls that needed to be brought down.

He was just deciding where he was taking his destructive tendencies next when the front door knocker sounded through the house. Dusting his hands off on the muggle jeans he was wearing, he ran downstairs, wondering who it could be. He'd had many an owl since his return to the wizarding world, ranging from people who had 'always believed in his innocence' to ones who 'were not in the least bit fooled by his act and they'd be keeping an eye on him, let him be warned' and anything in between.

Most of those letters he consigned to the fire. Still, not many people knew where he was spending his days, and of those that did, not many could actually approach the house. Normally the wards would give him at least an inkling of who to expect, but they were sulking about the destruction of the house. He didn't know how else to describe what they were doing (or not doing). He hoped they'd be back once the house recognised that it wasn't wilful destruction without any plan in place. Otherwise he'd have to cast whole new wards once the building was done, and that was just a pain in the arse.

That thought of course did not help with his current situation. He threw open the door and looked out at a person's back. The knocker had turned around and was surveying the square. Sirius took in the threadbare sweater and the sandy hair – streaked with more grey than he remembered – and knew who it was even before the man turned around hesitantly.

"Moony."

His voice sounded strange to his own ears. Scratchy, like it had been when Harry and the Doctor had first rescued him, but coming from far away.

Remus shot him a lopsided little grin, but he did not come further, perhaps unsure of his welcome. He plucked nervously at his sweater, then he crossed his arms as if he'd caught himself.

"Sirius, hi." His mouth worked for a moment without a sound coming out, but then he forced more air behind his words. "Look, I... I know I haven't owled to say that I'm coming, and err... I know I made a terrible, terrible mistake in believing that you could ever betray Lily and James like that, but as far as I knew you were the Secret Keeper so when everyone said that you'd done it, I believed them. I'm sorry about that, I really am, and then I read about your escape in the paper and then later the trial and... Merlin, when I realised Peter was still alive, that he was the traitor all along, I nearly gave in to the beast right there, but then I wanted to see you again more than I wanted revenge, and Merlin I'm rambling, you probably don't want to see me again, I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry."

Remus started turning away, shoulders drooping, as if he was going away. But that couldn't be right, because this was _Moony_ , and Moonys should not go away when there were Padfoots who had not seen them in such a long, long time. A hand shot out without bothering to check in with his brain, grabbing Moony's upper arm and turning him back.

Sirius looked searchingly into his friend's face. There were too many lines there. Moony looked as though he'd aged ten years instead of three. Perhaps that's what happened to you if you lost all of your chosen family in one night, one way or another. But perhaps Sirius could ease away some of those lines. He opened his arms and wrapped Moony in a hug, hanging on until the werewolf lost his stiff posture and embraced him back, hands clinging to the back of his T-shirt.

"I'm sorry too," said Sirius. "We didn't trust you, right at the end, when we should have known better. We thought you were the spy, so we didn't tell you about the switch. And then when the unthinkable happened there was nobody who could vouch for me, or demand a trial."

He released his friend and looked at him again. Then he grinned. "Come on in. You should see what I've done to the place – it's quite the improvement, I must say."

Remus' eyes crinkled in silent laughter, and he let himself be led into the house. They'd need to talk more before they could entirely lay the past to rest, but already the future seemed ten times brighter than it had only half an hour ago.

"Sirius, my boy!"

Sirius slowly turned towards the voice, his eyes slightly narrowed. When he faced the white-bearded wizard, he had to squash the urge to call him 'Headmaster', as he would have done five years ago. He'd gone through enough since that time that he would not automatically defer to the man, mostly because he had to wonder why the Chief Warlock of the Wizangamot had not called for a trial for him, even though it lay within his power and even Snape had received one.

Even if he had done the unthinkable and betrayed his brother in all but blood, he would still have deserved a trial. Of course, the old man might have followed the same thought pattern as Moony, but at least the werewolf had apologised for that. Sirius doubted Dumbledore would issue any such apology. Still, if the man in front of him was going for familiarity, as his words implied, familiarity he could get.

"Albus," he answered, politely enough. He wasn't planning to ask about the non-existent trial, as he knew the headmaster well enough to know he'd get an eye twinkle and an entirely unhelpful answer. He would listen to what the old coot wanted, but then he'd keep his own counsel. The days of blind faith that Dumbledore knew what he was doing were long gone.

"I was hoping I'd run into you one of these days, my boy. You did stir up a branch of bowtruckles, didn't you, what with your escape and then getting cleared. I do wonder who might have gone and found young Peter, when we all believed him dead?"

Well, that was not subtle at all, was it? Perhaps the old man was losing his touch. Sirius and Amelia had decided not to release his own role in the capture of the rat to the public. People might have a hard time forgiving him for breaking into the Ministry, even for such a cause as to deliver Pettigrew into the right hands, when his good name was still as shaky as it was. Or they would have forgiven him immediately, depending on which story the Daily Prophet sold, they were fickle like that. In any case, he had not wanted to reveal the existence of the Doctor to the wider public.

"Perhaps there was someone who believed in me, and who didn't think that finding one finger was the same as finding a body. Who knows?

"Was there something specific you wanted to ask, Albus? I do have an appointment to keep."

"Of course, dear boy. I won't keep you long. I was just wondering what you intended to do about Harry, now that you have your freedom?"

Nothing, because interfering now would cause a paradox down the line, and they needed to avoid that. Dumbledore didn't need to know that, though, so Sirius had to wonder what the old man's interest in his godson was.

"For now, I'm focused on rebuilding my name, and my house. Once that is done, I will try to find out where he is, who is raising him, and see if I can become part of his life, the way I was supposed to. Maybe let him live with me, if he and his current guardians are amenable. Why? Do you know where he is?"

Dumbledore looked at him earnestly. "I do indeed. I have placed him with family, in a secure location. I must ask that you not contact him. We would not want danger to befall him because you went to see him, would we? I assure you, he is well taken care of."

 _Shows what you know,_ thought Sirius. He wondered if that speech would have been enough to placate him, back in his Order of the Phoenix days. He thought it might have been. No reason to let Dumbledore know that it wasn't enough now, though. It was fortunate that the headmaster had requested an action – or lack of action – that aligned with his own agenda. It made it no hardship to deceive the old man.

He nearly snorted, but he kept it internal. He'd been glad enough to get sorted into Gryffindor, as a giant fuck you at his family, but that didn't change the fact that he'd been raised by a bunch of Slytherins, and sometimes it showed.

He let his shoulders slump in apparent defeat, nodding to Dumbledore's words.

"Ok, I trust you. But I do hope I can become part of his life once he gets to Hogwarts?"

Dumbledore's eyes started twinkling, no doubt because he got what he wanted. Was he in for a surprise. It would not be long now before the Doctor would take Harry away to see the stars, and Sirius would be able to say with absolute sincerity that he'd kept his word and not gone near Harry. That might teach the man how secure his location was.

"I am glad to hear it, dear boy," said Dumbledore. "I'm sure we can arrange something. I will not keep you from your appointment any longer."

Sirius watched the old coot walk away with a thoughtful look. Dumbledore would need watching. He had plans cooking, and they depended on Harry staying where he was. If he could, he would find out the real reason. At least he was still convinced Sirius trusted his judgement. That might make it easier to gather information.

They were nearing the date when he'd gone to Ollivander's to buy a new wand, so Sirius drafted a letter and owled it to the wandmaker, together with the correct amount of money. He'd be glad to get Harry here, not least because he would not have to fear causing a paradox every other day.


	10. Chapter 7 - Surprise Visit

_Chapter 7_

Sirius was sitting at his desk, writing down some calculations. He'd thought about joining the Aurors again, once he felt ready for a job, but eventually had decided against it. There was too much danger involved in chasing Dark wizards. Not that he was a coward, but he needed to be here when Harry arrived, and that was hard to do if a Dark wizard killed him.

Instead, he'd gone into real estate – and Merlin, was that a profession he'd never have thought he'd go for! His 16-year-old self would never have believed it. But he wanted Harry to have a good home, and part of that was the neighbourhood. The renovations to his own house had given him the idea to buy some of the surrounding houses and fix them up into wizarding apartments. He was also thinking about fixing other houses into Muggle apartments, because there was no better way to get to know people than living in close proximity to them.

Suddenly he heard the sound that had changed his life for the better some years ago. He frowned for a moment – the Doctor was early. In fact, several years early, they hadn't even reached the date when Harry would first meet the Doctor, although it would be very soon, Harry was turning six this year. Perhaps they'd decided to come visit on the way to the correct year, but the Doctor hadn't thought he could aim that precisely.

Better go and see what was happening. Laying down his quill, the wizard quickly stood up and made his way to the room that he had specifically added for the TARDIS's use. It was a little bit bigger than her outer dimensions, and if she landed correctly her door would open into the hallway.

Sirius had only just reached said room when the TARDIS door opened and out stepped a youngish looking man with floppy hair. He was wearing a brown vest and a red bowtie. Sirius was fairly sure he'd never seen the man, and yet there was something familiar about him.

He was followed at a more sedate pace by a striking woman with wild curly hair and a wicked smile on her face. She was not even close to familiar, but he could sense immediately that this was a dangerous woman.

The young man was the first to speak. After turning a full circle on the spot to take in his surroundings, he looked at the wizard with obvious delight.

"Sirius, my old friend!" He came forward to plant his hands on Sirius' shoulders and give two kisses in the air next to his cheeks. "How are you doing? It's been such a long time since I saw you. Years! Decades! Maybe even centuries, who knows!"

Sirius was not sure what he wanted to say, even as he opened his mouth, but the woman spoke first. "Doctor, did you ever explain to Sirius about regeneration? Because I don't think he knows who you are."

Sirius looked back at the young man. "You're the Doctor? What happened?"

"Oooh, right, you only knew my old face, didn't you. Well, Time Lords have this trick where a mortally wounded body can regenerate into a new body, which I never explained because I was never in mortal danger when you knew me."

While he talked, his hands waved around as if he didn't quite know what to do with them.

Sirirus looked at him a moment longer, but then he shrugged. What with polyjuice or self-transfigurations – or even metamorphmagi, mustn't forget Tonks – he was not unfamiliar with people looking different from the last time he saw them. Standard procedure in such a case, even if this was the opposite of polyjuice (same person, different face, rather than same face, different person) – ask a question.

"Alright, if you're the Doctor... where did we catch the traitor?"

"In the sewers. And without getting anybody wet, too!"

Sirius nodded. Nobody but himself, the Doctor and Harry knew that. He turned to the woman.

"Don't tell me you're Harry, because last I checked he's not a Time Lord, so unless he's actually a metamorphmagus I doubt he'd end up looking like you."

She laughed, a low but pleasant sound. "Nothing of the sort, darling. I'm River Song, nice to meet you."

The Doctor flapped his hands. "I dropped off Harry ages ago. Thanks for that nice landing room, by the way. I take it I haven't yet?"

River laughed. "That sentence makes no sense if you don't know about time travel."

The Doctor waved off her words. "Good thing we all know about it then."

Sirirus grinned, before answering the Doctor's question.

"No, not yet. As far as I can tell we're almost at the time when you pick up Harry for the first time. So another... four years? Before you drop him off."

"Oh. Yes. Good. Could you maybe not mention this little visit? I only met River a couple of times wearing that face, and she was confusing enough on her own, without the added complication of her travelling with me now."

A wicked smile curved around River's lips. "Aww Sweetie, you say the nicest things. But maybe you should get to the point of the visit?"

"Right! Of course! So, Sirius," he said, clasping his hands together and leaning forward intently, "we were on our way to Baynus Two, when we made a little detour."

"Little meaning 'the other side of the galaxy'," River supplied.

"Honest mistake. We ended up in a cave – which, to be fair, was a fairly big clue that we were not actually on the famous Floating Islands of Andor..."

" – there are no caves anywhere on Baynus One, Two OR Three, and the ones on Four barely deserve the name."

"Where we found someone on the verge of being drowned," the Doctor continued, ignoring River's comments with the ease of practice. "Now generally speaking, in a struggle between a horde of zombies (and just imagine, actual zombies!) and one living person, I'd say we're firmly on the side of said living person. Aren't we?"

"We are."

"So River did her thing," one hand flapped again as if to encompass the thing that River did, "while I rescued the person from imminent drowning and possible zombiehood. I'm not sure how they propagate..."

"Back on track, Doctor."

"Yes! So, once we'd saved this person and had established that we were, in fact, on earth, we found out that he is known to you, or you are known to him, or you know each other... um."

Sirius could almost feel River's eyeroll, but instead of commenting again she opened the TARDIS door.

"You can come out now, love."

And out stepped another young man, about 18 or 19 years old, with the dark hair and eyes typical of the Blacks. Sirius looked at him with wide eyes and a jaw that felt like it wanted to drop to the floor. His eyes sought out the Doctor, then River, then they settled on the young man again. Finally, one word escaped his suddenly dry lips, more a sigh than an actual word.

"Regulus."


	11. Chapter 8 - Welcome home, Harry

_Chapter 8_

"Padfoot!"

A small shape barrelled into the library, where he'd been engrossed in a book, and flew around his neck. Sirius laughed as he lay the book out of harm's reach.

"Harry? I didn't hear the TARDIS land! Where's the Doctor?"

"He's coming," said Harry's voice, muffled against his shoulder. "Something about needing to check the Traven Connector. I think he wanted to give us time to say hi."

Sirirus chuckled and put the 10-year-old – who was finally in the right time zone – back on the floor. He inspected the boy from top to bottom and peered searchingly into his eyes. He looked the same as he had back when they'd dropped Sirius off to start rebuilding his life, but that didn't have to mean much.

"Be honest now, Harry. Did you come straight here like you said you would?"

Harry grinned and cocked his head to the side a little. "Well," he started, drawing out the word the way the Doctor usually did, "we might have made a small detour. Well, maybe two. But don't worry, there wasn't much danger and we were only delayed a week tops. So, not too bad?"

Sirius chuckled again and drew the boy back into a hug, although his feet remained on the floor this time, he was really too heavy for extended carrying.

"You're right, it could have been worse. I have so much to tell you, so many things happened while you hopped over. But first a very important question."

He let go of Harry and kneeled down with an earnest expression on his face. "Do you want to see your room?"

Harry grinned at him. For a moment Sirirus was painfully reminded of James, but the moment quickly passed. During their adventures to clear his name, he'd learned to see Harry as his own person, rather than a continuation of the boy he'd known long ago. While he might recognise a gesture that either of his parents used to make, there was as much influence from the Doctor, and just as much that was uniquely Harry.

Sirius gestured to the door. "Come on then. There's also a couple of people I would like you to meet."

When they left the library, they met the Doctor, who was examining a picture on the wall in fascination. The picture showed Sirius and Remus together, their arms over each other's shoulders. It had been taken shortly after their reunion. From time to time they looked to the side at something happening off-screen, but most of their attention currently was on the Doctor. They were waving happily with their free hands.

The Doctor turned to Sirius and Harry with a wide grin. "Magic is wonderful! I always say that what people call magic is just suffiently advanced technology, but with this whole actual magic deal I haven't even seen a fraction of all the possibilities, despite how primitive this planet is in general."

Sirius and Harry shared an amused glance at the Doctor's casual insult of their home world.

"Look at this picture! I've never been anywhere that could infuse pictures with mobility and even personality like this! Without magic you could probably do something with short movies in a loop or something, but these people are actually interacting with us! Brilliant!"

"If you're that impressed with a wizarding picture, Doctor, wait 'til you see a portrait." Sirius leaned forward and continued in a stage whisper, "They talk back!"

Before long, they had received a tour of the house, as well as a summary of everything that had happened during their absence – and things that had not happened, too. For example, Albus Dumbledore had not come knocking when Harry had first gone with the Doctor, even though he had seemed to have plans that depended on Harry staying with his aunt and uncle.

Either the old man had been looking for the past four years without telling anybody that his precious Boy-Who-Lived was missing (possible, but not very likely, since Sirius would have been a good lead), or he had never actually noticed that Harry did not live with his blood relations anymore. This second option was more likely, considering he hadn't bothered to check up on Harry in the four or five years previous.

He also entertained them with the thrilling tale of his adventures with Regulus and Remus, embelished only a little bit here and there to make them more heroic. Most of them were heroic enough in their own right that they didn't even need that much embellishment.

As the conversation tapered off to a logical conclusion, the Doctor started casting covert glances in the direction of the TARDIS. Sirius seemed to notice, as he made up an excuse to leave the room.

Harry and the Doctor both stood up, facing each other. Harry folded his arms over his chest, as if he was feeling a bit cold. "This is it, huh?" he said.

The Doctor nodded sadly, for once not sporting his well-known manic grin. "I guess it is. We've had some good times though. I'll miss you, you know. Who'll tweak my nose about my piloting skills now?"

Harry blinked away the tears in his eyes, then he broke is pose and hugged the Doctor around his waist.

"Oh Doctor, I'll miss you too! And I'll miss the TARDIS. But you'll come to visit sometimes?"

The Doctor hugged the boy back. "Of course, wouldn't miss it. I want to hear all about Hogwarts once you've gone there. And hey, you have a real home now, one that stays in the same place. You're going all domestic on me! Maybe you could even get yourself a pet, like you wanted back on Straydon, remember?"

Harry laughed against the Doctor's chest. "I'm no longer convinced that I cannot live without a purple fluffball with three eyes and ten legs, Doctor. But you know that the TARDIS was a real home for me too, right?"

The Doctor smiled softly. "Right."

"Thank you Doctor. For finding me, and for letting me stay with you, and for... well, for everything really."

"You're welcome, Harry."

The Doctor opened the TARDIS door and stepped inside with one foot, leaning against the frame for a moment. He looked back at Harry.

"You'll live a good life, Harry, won't you?"

Harry nodded. "Like you taught me, Doctor. Neither cruel, nor cowardly."

The Doctor smiled broadly. "Never give up. Never give in. Yes, I did teach you that, didn't I?"

Harry nodded again, and the Doctor turned to Sirius. "You'll take good care of him?"

"As if he were my own son."

The Doctor nodded once, and raised his hand in goodbye. Then he stepped fully into the TARDIS, closing the door behind him. Sirius draped his arm around Harry's shoulder, and together they watched the blue box fading out of sight.

They had some trials ahead of them as they learned to live together. But the two of them, together with Remus and Regulus, would find a way. He'd make sure of it.

And after that... well, who knew what the future would bring!


End file.
